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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Consciousness | 15/18 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T13:40:02.432894+00:00 | kb-cron |
Of the eight types of consciousness in the Lycan classification, some are detectable in utero and others develop years after birth. Psychologist and educator William Foulkes studied children's dreams and concluded that prior to the shift in cognitive maturation that humans experience during ages five to seven, children lack the Lockean consciousness that Lycan had labeled "introspective consciousness" and that Foulkes labels "self-reflection". It should be pointed out, however, that some research in experimental philosophy suggests that a layperson's self-report of experience may in fact not be an introspective report of an internal 'Cartesian theater' but of an external world in which, according to the layperson, there are colors, sounds, and other qualities as they are experienced, that philosophers typically regard as phenomenal and 'internal.' In a 2020 paper, Katherine Nelson and Robyn Fivush use "autobiographical consciousness" to label essentially the same faculty, and agree with Foulkes on the timing of this faculty's acquisition. Nelson and Fivush contend that "language is the tool by which humans create a new, uniquely human form of consciousness, namely, autobiographical consciousness". Julian Jaynes had staked out these positions decades earlier. Citing the developmental steps that lead the infant to autobiographical consciousness, Nelson and Fivush point to the acquisition of "theory of mind", calling theory of mind "necessary for autobiographical consciousness" and defining it as "understanding differences between one's own mind and others' minds in terms of beliefs, desires, emotions and thoughts". They write, "The hallmark of theory of mind, the understanding of false belief, occurs ... at five to six years of age".
=== In animals ===
The topic of animal consciousness is beset by a number of difficulties. It poses the problem of other minds in an especially severe form, because non-human animals, lacking the ability to express human language, cannot tell humans about their experiences. Also, it is difficult to reason objectively about the question, because a denial that an animal is conscious is often taken to imply that it does not feel, its life has no value, and that harming it is not morally wrong. Descartes, for example, has sometimes been blamed for mistreatment of animals due to the fact that he believed only humans have a non-physical mind. Most people have a strong intuition that some animals, such as cats and dogs, are conscious, while others, such as insects, are not; but the sources of this intuition are not obvious, and are often based on personal interactions with pets and other animals they have observed.
Philosophers who consider subjective experience the essence of consciousness also generally believe, as a correlate, that the existence and nature of animal consciousness can never rigorously be known. Thomas Nagel spelled out this point of view in an influential essay titled "What Is it Like to Be a Bat?". He said that an organism is conscious "if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism—something it is like for the organism"; and he argued that no matter how much we know about an animal's brain and behavior, we can never really put ourselves into the mind of the animal and experience its world in the way it does itself. Other thinkers, such as Douglas Hofstadter, dismiss this argument as incoherent. Several psychologists and ethologists have argued for the existence of animal consciousness by describing a range of behaviors that appear to show animals holding beliefs about things they cannot directly perceive—Donald Griffin's 2001 book Animal Minds reviews a substantial portion of the evidence. On July 7, 2012, eminent scientists from different branches of neuroscience gathered at the University of Cambridge to celebrate the Francis Crick Memorial Conference, which deals with consciousness in humans and pre-linguistic consciousness in nonhuman animals. After the conference, they signed in the presence of Stephen Hawking, the 'Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness', which summarizes the most important findings of the survey: "We decided to reach a consensus and make a statement directed to the public that is not scientific. It's obvious to everyone in this room that animals have consciousness, but it is not obvious to the rest of the world. It is not obvious to the rest of the Western world or the Far East. It is not obvious to the society." "Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals ..., including all mammals and birds, and other creatures, ... have the necessary neural substrates of consciousness and the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors."
=== In artificial intelligence ===
The idea of an artifact made conscious is an ancient theme of mythology, appearing for example in the Greek myth of Pygmalion, who carved a statue that was magically brought to life, and in medieval Jewish stories of the Golem, a magically animated homunculus built of clay. However, the possibility of actually constructing a conscious machine was probably first discussed by Ada Lovelace, in a set of notes written in 1842 about the Analytical Engine invented by Charles Babbage, a precursor (never built) to modern electronic computers. Lovelace was essentially dismissive of the idea that a machine such as the Analytical Engine could think in a humanlike way. She wrote: